“Today,” I.A. Richards begins his 1936 lectures, rhetoric “is the
dreariest and least profitable part of the waste that the
unfortunate travel through in Freshman English! So low has Rhetoric
sunk that we would do better just to dismiss it to Limbo than to
trouble ourselves with it--unless we can find reason for believing
that it can become a study that will minister successfully to
important needs” (3). this is just what Richards sets out to do in
a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr that eventually became the thin
book
The Philosophy of Rhetoric.

For Richards, a literary scholar by training and one of the
founders of the Close REading and New Criticism, rhetoric had been
for too long about disputes and argumentation. Instead he proposes
that rhetoric should be “a study of misunderstanding and its
remedies” and investigation in “How much and in how many ways may
good communication differ from bad?” To this end, the proposes a
sort of philological rhetoric, one where there is to be
“persistent, systematic, detailed inquiry into how words work that
will take the place of the discredited subjuect which goes by the
name Rhetoric” (23). This description may rankle contemporary
rhetoricicans. We
like
argumentation, and resist the idea that what we should be doing
sounds like the very work schoolmarmn sentence diagramming, but
Richards recognized that the way words work cannot be divorced from
society.

But Ricahrds also broadened the idea of what rhetoric could be--not
just strict argumentation, but an exporation of all language.
“Perausion is just one of the aims of discourse” he writes. “It
poaches on others.” This opens up rhetoric to more than
argumentation, and Richards’ focus on words, words, words does not
come at the expense of thinking about meaning.

In fact, he derides what he calls the Proper Meaning
Superstitution, the fallacious ida that “a word has a meaning of
its own (ideally, only one) independent of and controlling its use
and purpose for which it should be uttered” (11).

Instead
“What a word means is the missing parts of the contexts from which
it draws its delegated efficacy” (35). It’s all context.

In order to illustrate the importance of context, Richards gives
the example of the metaphor, one of the four master tropes. He
separates the metaphor into its two parts: the tenor and vehicle.
the tenor is the thing behind the metaphor and the vehicle is the
means of conveying it. So if I said love is a battlefield, love is
the tenor and battlefield is the vehicle. That girl is a firework.
girl is tenor, firework is the vehicle. So far so good? So
metaphors, Richards says, “may work admirably without our being
able with any confidence to say how ti works or what is the ground
of the shift.” Richards gives his own, slightly outdated example
“If we call some one a pig or a duck, for example, it si little use
looking for some actual resemblance toa pig or a duck as the
ground. We do not call someone a duck ro imply that she has a bill
and paddles or is good to eat” (117). Little venture into
canniblistic imagry there, I.A., but, of course, we call someone a
duck becuase they are “charming and delightful”--or we could call
someone a duck if we were a little more british. But the duck
example highlights that while some metaphors work because of a
“direct remblance” between the tenor and the vehicle and sometimes
because of a similar
attitutude
to both--love is like a battlefield because there are similar
feelings to being at war and being in love. This all sounds like a
lot of poetics, but it demonstrates Richards concern for the very
small elements of communication.

Words are vitally important, down to the detail, for Richards.
“Words are the meeting points at which regions of experience which
can never combine in sensation or intuition, come together. They
are the occasion and the means of that growth which is the mind's
endless endeavor to order itself. That is why we have language. It
is no mere signalling system. It is the instrument of all our
distinctively human development, of everything in which we go
beyond the other animals." (131)

Ultimately, he envisions a philosophical restructuring of rhetoric
were “we may in time learn so much about words that they will tell
us how our minds work” (136). Further, he goes on “It seems modest
and reasonable to combine these dreams and hope that a patient
persistence with the problems of Rhetoric may, while exposing the
causes and modes of the misinterpretation of words, also
throw light upon and suggest a remdial discipline for deeper and
more grievous disorders; that, as the mall and local errors in our
everday misunderstandings with language are models in miniature of
the greater errors which disturb the development of our
personalities, their study may also show us more about how these
large scale disasters may be avoided (136-7). The man who pioneered
New Criticism proposes a New Rhetoric beyond
argumentation.

for all that, you won’t read much rhetorical scholarship pulling on
Richards. Back in 1997, Stuart C Brown pointed out that while most
rhetoric students read the Philosophy of Rhetoric, or at least
excerpts of it, rhetorical scholars don’t really pay much attention
to Richards. Maybe they have a word or two of “faint praise” and
ackowledge him as part of our tradition, but they don’t spend much
time on him. Brown thinks this is a mistake and that Ricahrds “
established
the
basic argument for establishing a truly new rhetoric” (219) By
acknowledging the multiplicity of meanings, the instabliity of
langauge, Richards opens up space for rhetorical interpretation.
Brown makes an indepth defense of the value of Richards’ work. But
still, 1997 was a long time ago and Richards still hasn’t come to
the forefront as a rhetorical influence.

that being said, we’ll get to spend a little more time with
Richards, because next week we’re going to talk about Richard’s
other major work--the Meaning of Meaning--so get ready to get
hipster about your rhetorical theoretians next time on Mere
Rhetoric.

About the Podcast

A podcast for beginners and insiders about the people, ideas and movements that have defined the history of rhetoric.